CN Condemns FBI Raid on CN Columnist’s Home

August 9, 2024

 Consortium News strongly condemns the raid on the home of its columnist Scott Ritter by the F.B.l. on Thursday as a serious threat to press freedom.

Scott Ritter speaking with the media outside his home after the F.B.I. left with boxes of documents and electronics. (CBS 6 Albany/YouTube screenshot)

By Consortium News

Consortium News condemns in the strongest terms the F.B.I. raid on the home of CN columnist Scott Ritter. 

Federal agents removed Ritter’s electronic equipment and numerous boxes of paper files from his Albany, N.Y. area home Thursday on suspicion that the former U.N. weapons inspector is violating the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act.

In a video posted to his Substack page, Ritter said that normally in alleged FARA violation cases the authorities send a letter to the subject of the inquiry informing them of the investigation. They do not send numerous F.B.I. agents to the door with a warrant to search and remove potential evidence.

The warrant, a copy of which Ritter posted, only called for electronic devices to be removed, but the agents, whom Ritter said acted professionally, also removed boxes of paper United Nations files from his days as a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s. As Ritter says in the video, U.N. documents are never classified and could have nothing to do with the alleged FARA case against him.

“So the idea that, this is normal procedure is absurd in the extreme. I’m not a foreign agent. What I am is a journalist. And this is how we need to couch this entire thing. What the F.B.I. did yesterday, what the United States government did yesterday, was a frontal assault not only on free speech, but a free press,” Ritter said in the video. 

Ritter says he’s being targeted because of his freelance work for Russian media. In the wake of Russiagate, the U.S. Department of Justice in 2017 forced Russian-government financed media companies to register as foreign agents. But only the principal executives of RT and Sputnik need to register, not employees or freelancers such as Ritter.

“They are seeking to intimidate a journalist with a long record of journalism, to intimidate this journalist, me, from engaging in activities such as the research and publication of articles and materials critical of U.S. policy in Ukraine, supportive of Russian objectives,” he said.

“Just a quick reminder. The U.S. courts have determined that under FARA, coincidence of ideas between an individual such as myself and a foreign government, Russia, does not weigh in on FARA,” Ritter said.

“So the fact that the Russian government and I happen to have coinciding viewpoints on critical issues of the day might reflect that we’re both on the right side of history as opposed to me being an agent of the Russian government. In fact, it does reflect that we’re both on the right side of history,” he said. 

Because of his views, Ritter has been placed on a “kill list” by the Ukrainian government. The local CBS News affiliate in Albany, N.Y., apparently tipped off by the F.B.I., filmed agents removing boxes from Ritter’s home. In the process they revealed his home address and license plate numbers.

Ritter said in the video (published on CN) that a police SWAT team was also sent to his home Thursday evening and left without incident.

Ritter said:

“I’m a journalist. I have a constitutional right of free speech associated with a free press to do what I’m doing. And to shut up means I’ve allowed the United States government to intimidate a journalist into silence. That simply isn’t going to happen.

Why would the F.B.I. do this? I think we can’t ask that question without bringing up the obvious. What I’m saying and doing strikes fear in the hearts of some people in Washington, D.C., whether it be the State Department, the C.I.A, the White House, Department of Justice; it strikes fear in the hearts of the Ukrainian government.”

Consortium News calls on the Justice Department to immediately cease its intimidation of one of our columnists as it constitutes state interference in the operation of the media and a threat to press freedom. 

CONSORTIUM NEWS